Hope Summers
Hope is the first mutant to be born after the Decimation, an event in which the Scarlet Witch uses her reality-altering superpower to turn all but 198 of the world's mutants into regular, depowered humans. The moment Hope is born, the mutant locating computer Cerebro explodes, and soon afterwards the hunt for her begins. Hope's town is attacked by the Purifiers, who use information given them by the time-traveling Nimrod who warns them of her arrival. Although all the children in town are murdered by the Purifiers, the X-Man Cable manages to save Hope.According to Cable, the baby is a Messianic figure destined to save both mutant and humankind. The Purifiers and Bishop, however, believe Hope will become the mutant equivalent of the Antichrist and kill a million humans in an instant. This event will turn humanity against mutants once again and lead into a new era of mutant persecution, creating the dark Into the future Into the future is the timeline into which Bishop is born. Later, the baby is kidnapped by the Marauders 5 and delivered to the mutant Mystique disguised as Mister Sinister. Mystique takes the baby and makes her touch the comatose Rogue with the intention of waking her from her coma.6 The mutant Gambit intervenes and takes Hope from Mystique. Believing the baby has died during her rescue, Gambit is amazed to find not only is the baby unharmed, but also Rogue has been awakened from her coma. After an intense battle between the Marauders, the X-Men and Predator X, X-Men leader Cyclops decides the baby would be better off with his son Cable, and allows him to take her to the future. However, an adamant Bishop decides to track Cable and the baby through time in order to kill her and prevent the bleak future of his own timeline from happening. Into the Future During one of the first battles with Bishop, Cable's time traveling device is damaged, so he can only jump into the future, instead of the past, when he needs to escape Bishop each time he finds them. After several jumps into the future, it is revealed that Cable has taken her to the secluded safe haven of New Liberty in the future, where Cable marries a woman named Hope, who is like a mother to the mutant baby.8 Finding relative peace there, he raises her with Hope until she's seven years old. But then New Liberty is invaded by humanoid insects who called themselves the United States Army, later calling themselves humanoid Blattarians.8 Cable fights them and leaves New Liberty with his wife and her in order to make sure New Liberty does not fall.9 After spending months in the wasteland, the family is attacked by the president of the insects, whom Hope manages to save her family from by stabbing the insect in his weak spot, since she has been watching Cable fight. Cable questions the president where he finds out that Bishop, in order to find Hope in the future, has destroyed all the continents in the world and left them uninhabitable, except North America, in order to box them in, find her and kill her. Cable kills the president, and the family moves on. The family encounters a settlement, but are met with resistance. Cable takes care of them easily, but not fast enough, as her mother is shot and dies in Cable's arms while she watches. Hope sees Cable bury the closest thing she ever had to a mother and departs with him. After arriving at a church, the pastor asks the name of the child. In that moment, Cable decides to name her Hope Summers, in honor of her adoptive mother.10 edit"Messiah War" Hope Summers is the center of the conflict between the forces of Stryfe, Cable, and X-Force in the Messiah War storyline, which ran through Cable and X-Force. It is part of a three-part story that began with X-Men: Messiah Complex.11 During the Messiah War, Hope is kidnapped by Cable's clone Stryfe who's in league with Bishop. She watches as Stryfe tortures Warpath until Cable, Wolverine and Elixir come to their rescue. In the following fight she survives along with the rest of the X-Force and Cable with Bishop losing an eye to Wolverine and having his time travel device damaged. When Cable and Hope are forced to time travel again, Hope resists because she wants to stay with X-23 and Elixir, with whom she had bonded during the events of Messiah War. She kicks Cable in mid-jump, stranding herself and Cable two years apart. They eventually reunite with Hope now an adult. At the 2009 San Francisco Wondercon, it was implied by Matt Fraction that Hope is closely tied to Jean Grey and her resurrection.12 edit"Homecoming" and "X-Men: Second Coming" In the four part series A Girl Called Hope, Hope watches over Cable as he sleeps, and she says "I would come back from the dead to kill them," referring to anyone who would harm Cable, with the Phoenix emblem reflecting in Hope's eyes again as she looks in the fire. As the short series closes, it is revealed that Hope slaughtered many of the evolved wolves in order to keep Cable safe. A promotional image for the event was released depicting two versions of Hope: one angelic, emphasizing her role as a savior; the other as evil and surrounded by the Phoenix Force, depicting her as a destroyer.131415 During the "X-Men: Second Coming" story arc Hope manifests various X-Men powers such as Armor's psionic armor and Colossus's organic steel and kills Lang and Creed. With the assistance of the X-Men, she eradicates Bastion and shatters the dome surrounding the city. At a celebratory bonfire, Emma Frost notices the flames around Hope take the shape of the Phoenix, and Hope momentarily takes on the appearance of Jean Grey, which triggers a flashback to the Sisterhood storyline where Jean freed her from Lady Mastermind's illusion after giving her the warning to prepare. Seized with terror, Emma runs to Cyclops to warn him but before she can, Cyclops tells her that Cerebro has found five new mutants that have appeared around the globe. editThe Five Lights After the events of Second Coming, five new mutants are detected by Cerebro, Hope is then tasked with the mission to find and help these "Five Lights". Hope finds the first of the Five Lights in Canada attempting to kill herself by jumping off a building. Hope touches the girl, Laurie Tromette, whose mutation is jump started (a power display similar to Sage's) and she develops an ability to fly. Introducing herself, she also agrees to follow Hope.16 Later she is called to Mexico by Cecilia Reyes and Psylocke where the second of the Five Lights lives. This new mutant, a boy called Gabriel Cohuelo, whose speed powers caused him to move so fast he had become invisible to the naked eye. Psylocke taps into Cecilia's powers to create a force field around his room so they would not lose him before Hope Summers could arrive to help. Hope manages to help him gather control of his abilities however it is also revealed that his powers made him age slightly.17 Accompanied by Storm, Hope finds the third of the Five Lights praying in a small church in Nigeria, surrounded by armed men who wish to kill her as they believe she is a "witch child", due to her power over fire and ice manifesting. Hope manages to help this new mutant, a girl named Idie Okonkwo, calm herself and gather control of her abilities. As Storm and Hope proceed to leave with Idie, the men attack, however Idie protects them from harm using her ability over fire thus destroying the men's vehicles. She then opens her eyes to reveal her right pupil is blue (ice) and her left pupil is orange (fire).18 Later Rogue, Hope, and the Lights arrive in Miami Beach to search for the fourth Light, a boy named Teon, in hopes of having him join the X-Men, their first interaction with Teon results in the feral boy's misguided attempt at "mating" with Hope. A battle ensues and is promptly finished by Hope who uses her power to tame Teon. From this point, Teon views her as his Master.19 editGeneration Hope In the series Generation Hope, Hope and the four "Lights" along with Rogue, Cyclops and Wolverine travel to Tokyo to find and help the fifth so-called "Light", a mutant boy called Kenji Uedo. Like the four new mutants to emerge since M-Day, Kenji's mutant powers manifested by causing him some horrible side effects (not unlike the side-effects experienced by Tetsuo in Akira). He impales his agent with a tendril when the agent pressured him about his contribution for the “Future is a Four-Letter Word” event. He burst through the apartment building and onto the street where Cyclops and Wolverine are investigating. Kenji pulls down the Blackbird carrying Rogue, Hope and the rest of the Lights. Teon takes off after one of Kenji’s tendrils and tears it apart. He releases a girl trapped inside but is utterly ineffective against him. Hope attempts to make contact with Kenji in order to complete his transformation but he seemingly avoids her touch. She presses on after him and encounters him within his apartment. She tells him she’s there to help and he explains how his “throat slid out of his neck and danced like an eel when this began” and NOW she’s here to help. He turns around and grabs Hope and a large explosion follows. It turns out to be telepathic message. Then she falls from the sky and Gabriel saves her although she's unconscious. Kenji is blasted away by Idie and Cyclops and Wolverine try to kill him but Hope awakes and with the lights tries to make contact with Kenji and she is successful. She passes out from strain. Later, she and the five lights travel to Utopia, where they all decide to stay to hone their powers. After Doctor Nemesis examines Hope and four of the lights and determines the specifications of each of their powers, Hope and Gabriel share a kiss during a moment of privacy. editPowers and abilitiesInto The Future In the beginning, Hope's powers were not explained. The only notable thing is that when she was born, she unleashed a massive psionic pulse that destroyed Cerebro. She also proved to be immune to Rogue's newly lethal absorption power and her touch erased all of the previous memories and abilities Rogue had absorbed, including those of the Hecatomb. She also cured Rogue of the Strain 88 virus.47 During Messiah Complex when the Three-in-One tried to search for her when she was kidnapped by the Marauders, she was able to block and disrupt Cerebro from finding her.5 In the "Messiah War" storyline, after mentally scanning her, Stryfe hints that she has the same powers he does (telekinesis and telepathy), and is potentially far more powerful than he is.20 While Hope is a child, she is already an excellent hand-to-hand combatant by copying Cable's movements. Despite not exhibiting further powers, not even the ones displayed while an infant, Hope was a keen observer and survivalist, able to find shelter and supplies. Hope has finally shown some glimpse of the telekinetic powers at her command by stopping a bullet fired at her by Bishop and generating extremely powerful energy blasts that overloaded his own natural ability to absorb projected energy. She could also sense Bishop, suggesting some form of telepathy.21 However, although Duane Swierczynski has hinted that these powers could be something else entirely,22 he also says that he has a thing for women with red hair and green eyes who can move objects with their mind. Images released by X-Men: Hope have indicated that Hope has a link to the Phoenix Force; the Phoenix raptor manifests in her eyes. The exact nature and extent of this connection has yet to be explained. She can also jump-start a mutant power though to what extent remains to be seen.